Across Enemy Lines
by Cyanide Saruwatari
Summary: As I backed toward the door, I saw a face I recognised. No, make that two faces. Or did it still count as one face if the faces were the same? Either way, both were glaring at me as if they would like nothing more than for me to drop dead...
1. Chapter 1: Yellow

**Across Enemy lines**

**Chapter 1: Yellow.**

"Yellow?!"

The shout echoed through the halls of the large, newly built mansion, and down in the kitchens a few maids rolled their eyes. Apparently, the master's kid, who they already knew was no angel, was on the rampage.

Upstairs, Charles King was battling to calm down his 16-year-old daughter.

"Katherine sweetheart, I'm sorry, but it isn't my choice. That's the uniform for girls at Ouran, after all" he gushed, speaking soothingly in their native tongue, English.

"But it's so…_Yellow_." She complained, glowering at the big, puffy dress that hung on the door of her wardrobe. "I mean _come on_. I'm meant to be here to lend you a hand with the fashion business now it's taking off! There is no way someone with a future in fashion should have to wear _that_."

Charles was silent for a moment as he shared in Katherine's horror at the uniform. If he was honest, it really was terrible. But, as usual, the kindly middle-aged man had a plan.

"How about this." He said slowly, taking a small pride in how quickly Katherine brightened up. He never got tired of seeing how much she trusted him. "...You wear it at your first day tomorrow. We simply don't have time to arrange anything else this evening, I'm afraid. But tonight, you can sketch up a few designs. I'll make sure that we have a replacement made up as soon as possible, and speak to Suoh-san about the possibility of one of your designs being used more widely throughout the school. I'm sure there will be plenty of girls who'd love to update their uniform."

Katherine smiled happily at her dad and nodded. He always knew what to do. And this would bring the company even more publicity than it had already been getting lately.

"That's perfect." She said, nodding again. In truth, she'd have preferred to put off her enrolment to the school until she had a new uniform, but that couldn't be helped. And one day couldn't hurt.

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The next morning, Katherine King woke up in a marginally better mood. A better mood that evaporated instantly when she saw the dress looming across at her from it's hanger. With a groan, she rolled out of bed and landed heavily on the polished wooden floor. This was going to be a _long _day.

After showering and changing into what she now referred to only as "the yellow monstrosity", Katherine wandered downstairs. Still bleary-eyed and wet-haired, she blundered into a kitchen and asked the cook, in English, to get her a bagel and a cup of tea. The bewildered woman just stared blankly at her, not having a clue what she was being asked for, and earned herself a little scream of frustration as Katherine spun on her heel and ran back to her bedroom. By the time her door was slammed shut behind her, Katherine had come up with a plan.

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"Oh _darn._" Katherine said falsely, as her cup of tea splashed down into her lap, staining and saturating the _yellow monstrosity_ completely. "It's ruined." She explained in Japanese to the nearest maid. "I'll have to go and change into my own clothes… what a shame."

And then, she was gone.

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It didn't take long after the _yellow monstrosity_'s destruction for Katherine to change into a pair of white, skinny-fit jeans, a simple white tank-top, and for her own amusement, a thick over-sized yellow knitted cardigan. "To pay homage to the fallen monstrosity" she explained to her father, as she slipped into the back seat of the car beside him.

He'd made special arrangements for a car to take him to work at the same time as taking her to school, so that he could help her get some last minute practise speaking Japanese. It wasn't that she struggled; she had been learning the language since she was 9, but her dad knew her well enough to identify her bad mood as nerves.

"…and try to stay out of the Hitachiin's hair, they won't be happy about the new competition their mother has been facing lately…"

Katherine yawned. This was ridiculous. She _knew_ all of this stuff already, why did she need the lecture again now?

"…oh! I almost forgot. That school has some strange habits. There's their 'host club', for one thing. I want you to give anyone involved in that an extremely wide berth. Ok?"

"Host Club?" she sat a little straighter in her seat, suddenly interested in what her dad had to say. What was a host club? Why hadn't it been mentioned on the school site?

As usual with these things, the moment things got interesting; it was time to get out. The car pulled to a stop outside the administration office and Charles gave his daughter a peck on the cheek.

"Have a good day, Rin Honey." He said with a smile as she got out, before slamming the door and making a quick getaway.

"But what about the Host…? …Crap." Muttering darkly under her breath, Rin turned and trudged toward the main building. She'd been right when she woke up. This was going to be one Hell of a long day.

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**A/N:** Okay, I know this was a crappy intro, but I promise this will get much better. Heh. Chapter 2 is almost done, so I should be able to update in the next couple of days. But I'd like at least one review first....please? just a couple of words to let me know this isn't a total waste of my time?

Love and Cubbles,  
Cya-chan X


	2. Chapter 2: Call me Rin

**Across Enemy Lines.**

**Chapter 2: "Call me Rin."  
**  
That first morning passed by in a whirlwind of repetitive questions. It seemed everyone Katherine spoke to wanted to know where in England she was from, if her hair was her natural colour, weather or not it was true that her dad had recently snatched a huge deal right from under the noses of a certain Mrs Hitachiin, and even just offering to help her get to grips with the school system.

Normally, an offer for help understanding your new school would seem silly, but there was a huge difference between Japan and the UK. For one thing, it was the teachers who moved around from class to class, not students; and while if she'd still been at home she'd have been in her final year before college, here Katherine was only a first year. It was enough to make a person's head spin.

Luckily though, this new schooling system meant that she only had to 'come on up to the front and introduce yourself, sweetheart' once. Not that the fact it only happened once made it any less of a humiliating disaster. Katherine rose from her assigned seat over by the window, started toward the front of the room... and immediately fell flat on her face.

Blushing scarlet, she sprang to her feet and scrambled over toward the teacher. There was just enough time for her to spot the foot sticking out from beneath a desk, and register who it belonged to. "Your family humiliated mine, now i'm doing the same to you." the smirk on the boy's face seemed to say. She glared back for a brief moment, before clearing her throat and plastering on her best smile. Speech-making was supposedly in the blood of all rich-kids. Apparently, Katherine was the exception.

"Uh...Hi?" she started, uncertainly. A few giggles came from the back of the room, and Katherine ground her teeth together in frustration.

"Well... my name is Katherine King. But please just call me Rin. My dad, as you can probably guess is Charles King, the British designer...Oh, and I have a twin sister back home in England, Alyssa. She's staying there to keep my mum company until they can both follow us out here, though...and I guess that's it...heh."

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Before lunchtime was, much to Rin's horror, Maths. It wasn't that she didn't like it. She just found it to be completely and utterly perplexing. It wasn't her fault it was so hard for her to get her head around it, really it wasn't. At the age of 12, she had been diagnosed with a learning difficulty called Dyscalculia, which basically meant that maths was damn near impossible for her. Unfortunately, her father had neglected to inform the school of this fact, and she had no idea what the Japanese word for 'maths special' was.

The Sensei peered over Rin's shoulder for one of the longest moments ever, reading over her work, which of course was all wrong. _Great_. She thought bitterly, rolling her eyes. _Now she'll think i'm a complete idiot, and she'll tell all the other teachers i'm stupid. I'm going to **kill **my dad.  
_  
When the bell finally rang, Rin practically dived out of her seat, grabbing her bag from the floor as an afterthought as she hurried toward the door.

"Kingu-san?" the teacher called after her retreating back, pronouncing her name wrong. "I need a quick word. Would you mind waiting behind for a few minutes?"

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After finally escaping the classroom, Rin found herself staring blankly at a piece of paper with an address and time scrawled on it. Apparently, Sensei had seen she'd been "struggling" and arranged for one of the other students to tutor her every evening after school. This was their address, and according to the neatly but hurriedly drawn characters beneath that, she was to get there for 6 o'clock. This was bloody wonderful. Not only did her Sensei think she was a fool, soon her classmates would too.

Rin needed to get her mind off all this maths stuff, and she already knew the best way to do it. She needed to play piano. Somehow, music always helped her unwind and calm down, and this place had 4 music rooms to choose from. All she had to do was decide where to go. Logic suggested the rooms were numbered in order of their size, and the smallest was sure to be less crowded. There was a chance though, that the smallest would also be the least well equipped, in which case something around the middle might be better. Eventually, Rin decided to take a look at the third, and work it out from there. If peace and quiet was what she wanted, that was probably the biggest mistake she could have made.

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"Irashaimase!- Welcome!"

The raven-haired English girl looked around the music room in total amazement. 7 jaw-droopingly handsome guys were standing in front of her with huge smiles plastered across their devastatingly gorgeous faces. This was going to be one_ hell_ of an exciting day.

Blushing a little as she stepped through the doors, Rin plucked a few rose-petals out of her hair. How they'd gotten them to swirl around when she opened the door was a complete mystery. Then again, she was still getting used to all this super-rich kid stuff. At first, she was too bewildered to notice that one of them was talking, until he started asking her about what "type" she liked,

"I uh... only came to practice." she told the egocentric blonde guy who, judging from the long-winded speech he'd launched into as soon as she walked in, was in charge of this whole weird operation.

"Eh? but..." He paused a moment, seeing to be confused, then his expression changed into a bizarre, kind of scary, puppy-dog pout and he retreated to a corner

Not wanting to look at that weird display any longer, Rin gave a nervous laugh before excusing herself and backing toward the door as quickly as she could. Until she saw a face she recognized, at least. Or rather, a pair of faces. Though, they were both almost exact copies of each other, so maybe they only counted for one face? Either way, Rin knew exactly who she was now looking at. And from the glare they were both giving her, the reorganization-wave had washed in both directions.

"Well.. Kat-erin Kingu-san. We meet at last." Said one of the fuming red-heads. Bizarrely, he'd spoken in English. Very BAD English. At any other time, the sound of such a terrible accent and dreadful pronunciation of her name would have sent Rin into a fit of giggles, but right now she was to focused on her anger to even crack a smile.

"Hikaru Hitachiin-san." she said, nodding curtly.

The response she got to these few words was not what she'd expected. The other people in the room hadn't seemed to pay much attention to her exchange with the pair of twins up until this point, but now all eyes were flickering from her to the twins, and then to one of the other boys in this ridiculous club.

"How did you...?" the boy stammered, his large, feminine eyes wide with shock. Rin actually found herself doing a double take then. This boy looked SO much like a girl. It was actually quite scary. She frowned a little at the question and looked back over to the pair of Hitachiin heirs.

"I'm not wrong, am I?" she asked, mildly entertained now. It was strange that simply knowing someone's name could cause such a stir. Maybe these people couldn't tell them apart? It might have had something to do with being a twin herself, but Rin was very good at picking up on even the most subtle differences in two faces. It wasn't that hard, especially when these were two people whose faces appeared all over the world in fashion news.

Her captive audience seemed like they were just managing to catch their breath, so Rin decided to confirm her knowledge for them.

"I have somewhere I need to be." she said shortly, turning her back on them to walk through the door.

Then, smirking a little, she paused in the doorway, her hand resting on the frame lightly, and turned back to the pair of twins with a soft chuckle. Just as she'd expected. They'd both stood up, put on hats, and moved to new seats. How boring.

"I'll see you later.. Kaoru." she said with a small, fleeting wink to the one that she knew for a fact was Kaoru Hitachiin. And then she was gone. Stepping out of the room and closing the door swiftly behind her.

There was another large pause while the girls looked around frantically between the same three people as last time, followed by a collective gasp that was easily audible even halfway down the hall once the boy-girl had confirmed Rin was right.

Rin laughed again at the sound and shook her head. These people really were easily impressed. She had a feeling that things were going to get much more interesting now that the 'Host Club' thought she was magic.

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**A/N: **Wow, two reviews after only one night! I'm impressed, amazed, and i'll admit flattered. So I hurried to get this chapter done this evening for you guys since I said I would once I had one review.... Anyway, The next one should be up within a week... It depends how much motivation I can get from you guys though! The more reviews I get, the more likely I am to get round to posting.

Love and Cubbles  
Cya-chan X


	3. Chapter 3: The mysterious Math tutor

**Across Enemy Lines  
Chapter 3: The mysterious Math tutor.  
**

Rin's eyes scanned over the large mansion sprawling out over the neat lawns in front of her as she stepped out of the car. She waved a half-hearted goodbye to her driver, and then he was gone; speeding off into the sunset. Wait, it was sunset already?

"Oh crap." She groaned, as she realised she was late.

After hurrying up the path to the front door, Rin ran a nervous hand through her recently curled hair. She'd taken great pains to change her appearance as much as possible in the short time she'd had to get ready after school. Now wearing a classic light-green _Lacoste_ polo shirt, the same white jeans as this morning, and a pair of simple white _Converse all-stars_, Katherine King looked every bit the rich westerner. _Might as well live up to the stereotypes._ She thought, tugging her oversized grey hoodie tighter against the chilly air.

This was the place on the paper she'd been given by her math sensei, and even while she stood outside the home of her mysterious tutor, she had no idea who lived here. Odly, she thought, the place seemed familiar. She knew she'd never been here, though, and most big houses looked more or less the same anyway, so she shrugged it off. How was Rin supposed to know it was the home of the very same person who'd tripped her that morning? The same person who she'd shocked a room full of people just from knowing his name?

The heavy door swung open , revealing a young maid wearing a huge smile.

"Hitachiin-sama is up in his room waiting, follow me!" she said brightly, before turning and hurrying inside.

Rin stood still, mouth wide-open. _Hitachiin?!_ Why the hell would either of them agree to help her? Whatever they were planning, it wasn't going to end well for her. Still, she had no choice but to go inside the big, sudenly terrifying building and face her fate. Whatever "_Hitachiin-Sama"_ had up his sleeve, Rin would just have to find a way to grin and bear it. In the morning, she could talk to Sensei and ask for someone else.

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Being in Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin's bedroom was a thouroughly bizarre experience for Rin, and something she honsetly never thought she'd find herself doing. She sat on the corner of their double bed (_Weird, _she thought, _don't they sleep separately?)_, waiting. The maid had told her that "Hitachiin-sama", she still wasn't sure which one, was waiting for her. But apparently he wasn't. If this was the best they could come up with to get to her, she wasn't surprised her dad had managed to show them up so easily. Rin was still muttering under her breath in irritation when the bedroom door eased open and a lone red-headded twin sat down beside her.

Blushing lightly as she realised she had company, Katherine lifted her gaze to the rather close face beside her and felt her cheeks heat up even more. She hadn't quite realised how attractive he was earlier, but being this close made it painfully obvious.

"Um... hi?" she ventured, laughing nervously. "So...You're the Math wizz then are you, Hikaru?"

The moment she called him by name, she regretted it. The boy beside her sprang back, tensing with his eyes wide, staring at her.

"How do you know which one of us is which?" he asked, looking shocked. Stung, even.

Rin didn't understand how knowing his name could cause him such offence. It didn't seem like a negative thing to her at all. Her and Alyssa always hated it when people confussed them for eachother. It was the whole reason they'd dyed their hair complete opposite colours. After a few minutes, Rin seemed to come back down to earth. The long pause when she'd been thinking about her twin had probably seemed like hesitation to Hikaru, but she wasn't in a hurry to explain it.

"I...don't know." she admitted at last, shrugging. "I have a twin of my own, maybe that helps somehow? But really, the two of you aren't as similar as people think. I mean sure, you act a lot alike, and your faces are obviously those of twin brothers. You're not identical, though. You're two separate people, no matter how close, how alike you are, you're still yourselves.... sorry, I'm rabling aren't I?"

Rin felt her cheeks heat up a second time, but Hikaru didn't seem to mind. Instead, he actually seemed to be deep in thought. It didn't last long though.

"So, are we going to study or not? Sensei told me you were having some trouble.."

Rin wrinkled her nose. "It's not just some trouble. The way my brain works means I can't do math at all." Hikaru looked dubious, and Katherine found herself desperate to justify herself. "Seriously! It's called Dyscalculia, you can Google it."

Hikaru laughed at that. This girl was definately not like the normal heiresses of Ouran. "Google it?" he said, sniggering.

"Oh shut up." she said, sticking out her toungue and whacking him upside the head with a pillow. "Are you gunna tutor me or what?"

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It was almost nine-thirty by the time Rin stepped out of the front door of the Hitachiin home and climbed into the waiting car. She'd spend the past few hours laughing and talking with Hikaru as they went back over the work from today's math class. Strangely, she had actually understood it a little better with his help. After a while, Kaoru had gotten bored and come to join them. It was weird to think about how easy the three of them had clicked, but something told her it would not be so relaxed in school tomorrow. Maybe it was something about being in the public eye that had made the two Hitachiins so adverse to the King girl, that was the only explaination for the hostility that made much sense to way, she wasn't going to stand for it. If they mutated backinto jerks again tomorrow, she was going to give as good as she got.

Hikaru and Kaoru watched Rin's car pull out of the driveway from their bedroom window, both feeling a little stunned. The girl they'd seen in school this morning had been annoying and stupid, a waste of time and the source of their family's latest strife. So what had occured in the time between then and this evening to make her so much fun?

"Kaoru?" The older of the two said, slowly.

"Mmm?"

"Do you think... do you think she'll go back to being a bitch tomorrow?"

"I don't know. Maybe. She might need to seem like she hates us for her father's sake. It would probably be bad for business to be freinds with the compettion..."

"So, should we act like we don't like her? For her dad, I mean?"

"Mmm. Maybe."

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**A/N: **Well, that's another chapter done. I managed to get this one uploaded much quicker than i'd expected, so i'm really proud of myself. Sorry if the twins are a little OOC here, I tried my best!..heh. Thanks for the reviews, keep 'em coming in! I'd like to have at least 3 more before i upload chapter four, so PLEASE review!

Love and cubbles  
Cya-chan x


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